Evolution

A thought from Raya Bidshahri at Singularity Hub: Today, what survives on Earth can be determined entirely by human beings. We can alter the genetics of almost any life form and potentially design entirely new ones. According to renowned physicist Freeman Dyson, “In the future, a new generation of artists will be writing genomes as fluently as Blake and Byron wrote verses.” In their book Evolving Ourselves, Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans describe a world where evolution is no longer driven by natural processes. Instead, it is driven by human choices, through what they call unnatural selection and non-random mutation. As a result, we will see the emergence of an entirely new species of human beings. More. The sheer volume Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Now scientists have reviewed all the evidence pointing towards an animal identity of the Weng’an fossils. Their findings have revealed that none of the characteristics previously used to define the fossils as animals are actually unique to animals alone, opening up the possibility for alternative identifications. Professor Philip Donoghue, another Bristol co-author, added: “Many proponents of animal affinity have argued that the Y-shaped junctions between the cells in the fossils are an important animal character, but this a feature common to many multicellular groups, including algae, that are very distant relatives of animals.” Dr Cunningham added: “It could be that the fossils belong to other groups, such as algae, and these possibilities need to be investigated carefully.” Despite Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: A study recently published in PLOS Biology provides information that substantially changes the prevailing idea about the brain formation process in vertebrates and sheds some light on how it might have evolved. The findings show that the interpretation maintained hitherto regarding the principal regions formed at the beginning of vertebrate brain development is not correct. … Amphioxus, considered close to vertebrates, was used in the research. This work shows that the brain of vertebrates must have formed initially from two regions (anterior and posterior), and not three (forebrain, midbrain and hindbrain), as proposed by the current prosomeric model. … The idea that these regions were formed independently and that each one of them has given rise to other Read More ›

From ScienceDaily Paleontologists have uncovered a new fossil species that sheds light on the origin of mandibulates, the most abundant and diverse group of organisms on Earth, to which belong familiar animals such as flies, ants, crayfish and centipedes. Named Tokummia katalepsis by the researchers, the creature documents for the first time the anatomy of early mandibulates, a sub-group of arthropods with specialized appendages known as mandibles, used to grasp, crush and cut their food. … “The pincers of Tokummia are large, yet also delicate and complex, reminding us of the shape of a can opener, with their couple of terminal teeth on one claw, and the other claw being curved towards them,” said Aria. “But we think they might Read More ›

The recent capture of a live giant shipworm highlights devolution. One form of devolution is allowing complex body systems to become vestigial, relying on microorganisms instead. From BBC: The giant shipworm is unique not just for its size, but also for feeding on nutrients in mud and marine sediment instead, using a type of bacteria. It therefore has a much smaller digestive system compared to other shipworms. And while the discovery of the animal itself is exciting, the team’s research has revealed there is an entire hidden ecosystem at play. The giant shipworm has bacteria that live inside its shell, converting chemicals from the nearby rotting wood into energy and nutrients, similar to what plants do with sunlight.More. Devolution poses Read More ›

For now. From Texas Education Agency: The board changed biology standard (4)(A) from “compare and contrast prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells and evaluate scientific explanation for their complexity;” as approved on first reading to: “compare and contrast prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, including their complexity, and compare and contrast scientific explanations for cellular complexity.” The board also changed biology standard (6)(A), which, as approved on first reading, read: “identify components of DNA, describe how information for specifying the traits of an organism is carried in the DNA, and evaluate scientific explanations for the origin of DNA;” As approved Friday, it now reads “identify components of DNA, identify how information for specifying the traits of an organism is carried in the DNA, and Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Deprived of oxygen, naked mole-rats can survive by metabolizing fructose just as plants do, researchers report this week in the journal Science. … “This is just the latest remarkable discovery about the naked mole-rat — a cold-blooded mammal that lives decades longer than other rodents, rarely gets cancer, and doesn’t feel many types of pain,” says Thomas Park, professor of biological sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who led an international team of researchers from UIC, the Max Delbrück Institute in Berlin and the University of Pretoria in South Africa on the study. … In humans, laboratory mice, and all other known mammals, when brain cells are starved of oxygen they run out of energy and Read More ›

Jonathan Wells’ new book, Zombie Science takes up the topics of his earlier book, Icons of Evolution (2000). Nothing has changed. Largely the same old dust-covered discredited icons. What is one to make of claims that Darwinism is a robust vision of evolution if stuff that was questionable back then is plopped into edition after edition of biology textbooks today? The conventional term for that sort of thing is cultural decline. Live systems are self-correcting. From Discovery Institute: Watch Jonathan Wells live online as he presents Zombie Science on Tues., April 18th If the icons of evolution were just innocent textbook errors, why do so many of them still persist? Find out when you tune into the live stream of Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The new specimen from the rich Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota (approximately 131 to 120 million years old) is referred to as Eoconfuciusornis, the oldest and most primitive member of the Confuciusornithiformes, a group of early birds characterized by the first occurrence of an avian beak. Its younger relative Confuciusornis is known from thousands of specimens but this is only the second specimen of Eoconfuciusornis found. This species comes only from the 130.7 Ma Huajiying Formation deposits in Hebei, which preserves the second oldest known fossil birds. Birds from this layer are very rare. This new specimen of Eoconfuciusornis, housed in the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature, in Eastern China, is a female. The ovary reveals developing yolks that Read More ›

From Mehmet Elgin and Elliott Sober at History of the Philosophy of Science: Abstract: Karl Popper argued in 1974 that evolutionary theory contains no testable laws and is therefore a metaphysical research program. Four years later, he said that he had changed his mind. Here we seek to understand Popper’s initial position and his subsequent retraction. We argue, contrary to Popper’s own assessment, that he did not change his mind at all about the substance of his original claim. We also explore how Popper’s views have ramifications for contemporary discussion of the nature of laws and the structure of evolutionary theory. – Popper’s Shifting Appraisal of Evolutionary Theory, Mehmet Elgin and Elliott Sober HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society Read More ›

Spotted at about 600 million years ago. From ScienceDaily: One of the longest-running controversies in evolutionary biology has been, ‘What was the oldest branch of the animal family tree?’ Was it the sponges, as had long been thought, or was it the delicate marine predators called comb jellies? A powerful new method has been devised to settle contentious phylogenetic tree-of-life issues like this and it comes down squarely on the side of comb jellies. … For nearly a century, scientists organized the animal family tree based in large part on their judgement of the relative complexity of various organisms. Because of their comparative simplicity, sponges were considered to be the earliest members of the animal lineage. This paradigm began to Read More ›

From Evolution News & Views: Some stunning upsets in conventional thinking about evolution have hit the news in rapid succession, threatening Darwin’s famous tree icon. Under the rules of neo-Darwinism, mutations must be random, providing fodder for the blind processes of natural selection. But here’s a case where animals defy their own neo-Darwinism. More. Yes, octopuses edit their genomes: News from the University of Chicago’s Marine Biological Laboratory implies that cephalopods were wise to choose the RNA editing bargain. “Mutation is usually thought of as the currency of natural selection, and these animals are suppressing that to maintain recoding flexibility at the RNA level,” says biologist Joshua Rosenthal. The lab “identified tens of thousands of evolutionarily conserved RNA recoding sites Read More ›

Abstract: Why is drug resistance common and vaccine resistance rare? Drugs and vaccines both impose substantial pressure on pathogen populations to evolve resistance and indeed, drug resistance typically emerges soon after the introduction of a drug. But vaccine resistance has only rarely emerged. Using well-established principles of population genetics and evolutionary ecology, we argue that two key differences between vaccines and drugs explain why vaccines have so far proved more robust against evolution than drugs. First, vaccines tend to work prophylactically while drugs tend to work therapeutically. Second, vaccines tend to induce immune responses against multiple targets on a pathogen while drugs tend to target very few. Consequently, pathogen populations generate less variation for vaccine resistance than they do for Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The ability to generate oxygen through photosynthesis — that helpful service performed by plants and algae, making life possible for humans and animals on Earth — evolved just once, roughly 2.3 billion years ago, in certain types of cyanobacteria. This planet-changing biological invention has never been duplicated, as far as anyone can tell. Instead, according to endosymbiotic theory, all the “green” oxygen-producing organisms (plants and algae) simply subsumed cyanobacteria as organelles in their cells at some point during their evolution. Endosymbiotic theory (life forms acquire useful units the way corporations acquire businesses) is a favourite in the coffee room around here but it is not up there with gravity. Still, do say on: Fischer and his colleagues found Read More ›

From Diana Kwon at The Scientist: While analyzing genetic material found in a wastewater treatment plant, scientists uncovered the genomes of four new species of related giant viruses. These newly discovered specimens, dubbed Klosneuviruses, challenge the notion that giant viruses evolved from a fourth domain of life, researchers wrote in a study published today (April 6) in Science. … Some scientists believe that rather than having a common ancestor, these giant viruses began as small viruses and gradually accumulated host genes over time. Analysis of the Klosneuvirus genome reveals evidence supporting the latter theory, according to the authors of the present study. More. These viruses have up to 1.57 million base pairs, with many genes encoded for components of translation Read More ›